Say hi to Sakina – creative champion

As a marketer, Sakina spends her time coming up with creative online and offline campaigns and great launches to retain existing users and bring new users onboard. We sat down with her to find out how she fills her days with passion and drive.

‘’The most interesting and fun part about my job is that no two days are the same. I come up with new ideas for new campaigns all the time and each are different from the other. As much as it’s fun, it can also get stressful to work on deadlines, write error-free content, analyse campaign strategies, and so on. On any given day, I can have so many exciting ideas and on another, I can’t think of any! My favourite part of the journey is to be able own my successes and learn from my failures. It’s a constant journey of self-improvement.’’

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Tell us more about yourself.

I was born in Sri Lanka and moved to Stockholm five years ago leaving behind a paradise of beaches, sun, friends and food, filled with spices of love! I studied marketing back home and worked along different aspects of the industry throughout my career from sales to business development, digital and offline marketing. Soon, I will start my own company by joining the Antler program in January 2019. I am truly excited!

I am driven by the desire to solve a common problem or improve the lives of others. I get excited and inspired by creating new business ideas. The game of growing, learning, falling, getting up again is what drives me. In 2011, I worked on a team that designed a Sri Lankan campaign to promote learning english with the British Council. We offered a simplified and interactive medium through which users can test and practice their English language skills through their mobile phones. It won the mBillionth Award in South Asia as the most interactive service. Success stories like these motivates me further to start my own!

What are your thoughts about women in the startup space?

While the growth in female entrepreneurship is now empowered by an open thinking generation, it's rooted in the fact that the qualities, abilities and the potential that women bring to the workplace can also make us very successful entrepreneurs

As much as I may not want to admit, often society still tends to expect women to “do it all”: to be the main caregiver, to manage the household, to be fruitful in their business or occupation, and to do it all with grace. Regardless, of all the talk about gender equality and sharing household tasks within the home, women still do far more work than men today. I think there’s a lot that still needs to be done to promote better conversations and awareness around this. I am proud to be able to be a champion for the female entrepreneurship space.

What are you keen on focusing on for your upcoming start up?

Personally, I want to focus on building a great product first before growing and scaling my business. Prototyping and market testing will help me better refine my business model and cater to the needs of my target audience. It’s easy to get users to test out and try a novel product or service but in order to gain customer favour, you need to make sure the product well-built for the needs of its users. Then, growth will be an easy step that follows.

What are your key strengths that you feel you can bring to the entrepreneur life?

I am a great negotiator and a bargainer. I am sure you can’t beat me to it! That’s what you do to get the maximum results out of a campaign with better management of your budgets.

Embark on the founder journey with me. If you want to start up your own business out of Stockholm with funding from day one, access to a global mentor network and the possibility of finding the perfect co-founder, then apply here.